Just who is in charge around here anyway?

"Mommy!! Come look!! I got a skateboard!!" yells Shay through the monitor, 20 minutes into his "nap."  Curiosity piqued, I poke my head into the bedroom, and see that he is standing in his bed on top of a big hardback picture book, arms out for "balance," with a big grin on his face.  "Wow," he says, "that's cool," as though prompting me with how one is supposed to respond. "Wow, Shay, that's cool," I say; "now, go to sleep."  "Shhh," he admonishes me, pointing over at his sleeping sister.  "Be quiet, Mommy; baby sleeping."

The Wheels on the School Bus

One of Shay's favorite songs, it will not surprise you to learn, is "The Wheels on the Bus."  Right now, he thinks all buses are school buses, so we usually sing "The Wheels on the School Bus."  He likes to request specific verses -- he loves hearing "The baby on the school bus goes wah-wah-wah"; I think it helps him work out some issues about the baby who sometimes cries in our house -- and he loves hearing about the Mommy and Daddy on the school bus who go "I love Shay."  But, sometimes we exit the realm of people and sing about the fire truck on the school bus, the dump truck on the school bus, and the digger on the school bus.  He kind of polices the sound effects too: once, in a sort of tired and bored mood, I sang that the fire truck on the school bus goes vroom vroom vroom, and he promptly shouted, "No, Mommy, whee-oo-whee-oo-whee-oo!"

Today, we worked on some construction paper fire truck/school bus creations -- I cut out the bodies of the trucks and a couple sets of wheels, attached some tape to them, and let Shay choose where to stick the wheels.  Then, I got out some crayons so that he could draw on the paper, but he had other ideas: "No, Mommy, more wheels."

Your wish is my command, master.

Rescue!

Shay's play has recently become much more interactive, creative, and imaginative -- really fun to watch and participate in.  He has always liked to have company when he plays, but for a long time it was just "Mommy, sit here!" and I'd sit beside him and he'd drive some trucks around.  In the past few weeks, though, he has been using the diggers to dig up legos and the wooden trees from his Thomas the Train set and some plastic Easter eggs, and then transferring them to a dump truck, or arranging them in the play garage. And, if I'm lucky, he'll let me have one of the lesser diggers and help him.  

He has also been staging crashes with his trains and trucks -- the train cars will all "fall" off the tracks, and Shay will yell out, "Oh no! Crash!" -- or a series of trucks will "crash," ending up lined up neatly in a row on their backs.  I wasn't sure if this was creative or just destructive, but today things got more interesting: I looked at a row of little "crashed" cars, and said, "Oh no, they crashed! Who will rescue the drivers? The ambulance, maybe?" and pointed to his toy ambulance.  "No, eh-yi-copter!" he replied, grabbing the helicopter and trailing it through the air.  "Eh-yi-copter flying through the air! Rescue trucks!" He carefully tapped the helicopter on each truck, and once a truck had been tapped he turned it over onto its wheels.  Then he toppled all the trucks again and handed me the helicopter.  "Mommy, rescue, " he instructed me. 

We played crash and rescue for most of the afternoon. 

And I was thinking that this age, almost two-and-a-half, with all its communication and creativity and imagination and joy in little things, this is my favorite age so far.  And then I was nursing Maggie, and I smiled down at her and smoothed her soft hair, and she came unlatched because she was smiling up at me, and so then she was lying in my arms and smiling and there was milk dripping out of her mouth, and I thought, THIS, this is my favorite age. 

Then, later, I cleaned poop out of someone's belly button and someone else handed me a booger, and I thought, these ages really aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Easter

We had a lovely Easter weekend visiting my parents; the kids got lots of great grandparent time. Shay bounced back and forth between the front yard and the back yard, riding a Thomas the Train scooter thing and a fire truck scooter thing around the porch, "camping" in a tent in the back yard, digging weeds, playing baseball, and I don't know what else -- I was too busy snoozing on the couch. Maggie couldn't believe that there were so many people who wanted to hold her and smile at her all the time, and she was cooing and smiling like crazy.  We had one beautiful morning at the beach, and Shay got interested in and excited about the water -- can't wait to take him to the lake this summer!  And, in the midst of all that activity, we also dyed Easter eggs, sent Shay on his first Easter egg hunt, gave the kids Easter baskets, and ate lots of egg salad.  Oh, and this happened:

Sorry, baby girl.  But you truly didn't seem to mind it.

Rainy Day Snuggles

My friend Becky has a post up about looking at a picture of her children from five years ago, and not being able to exactly remember how it felt to be in the ordinary moments with them then.  I'm sitting here with Seamus, snuggled up on the couch watching the rain pour down outside and watching Cars, and Maggie is napping in her swing, and I'm feeling a little bit teary after reading that post -- and as I looked over at Maggie, I was thinking that it's hard for me to remember exactly what Seamus was like at her age.  I know he was similar to her in many ways, but different in many ways, and I can remember some of that but what I mainly can't remember is exactly how it felt to be his mom, then.  I know it felt more new, and overwhelming, and scary than it feels to be his and Maggie's mom, now.  And I know that every day felt long and exhausting and like I was busy every single moment taking care of the baby -- and now, sometimes my parents or Patrick will take Seamus out for the whole morning and all I have to do is take care of the baby, and I'm all, am I missing something? Because this feels so easy, just having one baby to care for.

And then I was also thinking that sometimes the kids themselves do something to help solidify a moment, a memory, that I can preserve and think of later.  Since Maggie has been born, I have been consciously and unconsciously giving Shay some extra snuggles when I can, especially right after I see a little bit of jealousy in his face or in his behavior while I'm nursing or tending to the baby. I get him on my lap or in my arms somehow in the midst of our hide-and-go-seek game, or at the table where the train tracks are set up, and get in as many kisses as I can before he starts to protest.  And I don't think I really focused on the snuggles in a specific way, until the other day he reached up his arms for a hug, and as I hugged him, he nuzzled into my shoulder, wrapped his arms around my neck, patted my back, and sighed, "Oh, mama."  And I realized that he was snuggling me in exactly the same way that I snuggle him, except that I sigh, "Oh, Shay-Shay."  And I think that moment I will remember, even if I forget exactly how it feels to be Seamus and Maggie's mom in these early days, or how Seamus's little two-and-one-quarter year old body feels in my arms today.

Calming presence

When I was pregnant with Maggie, a friend asked me if I could tell anything about her personality from her behavior in utero or how I felt with her in utero.  She mentioned that a friend of hers had felt that she temporarily acquired some of her children's personality traits during her pregnancies -- and then saw those traits in her children later.  It made me stop to think; I had never really considered this as a possibility or noticed it.

While I did notice that Shay was a pretty active baby in utero and then was a pretty active baby (and toddler) after birth, I couldn't really think of personality traits of his that I had temporarily acquired while pregnant with him.  But, as I thought about this question while pregnant with Maggie, I did notice that I felt calmer and less anxious than I have ever felt as an adult.  I was in a (luckily very minor) car accident while I was pregnant with her, and even as I was transported via ambulance to the hospital to make sure that there were no internal injuries hurting the baby, I felt calm and confident that everything would be okay.  I had less of the palms-sweating-before-teaching-a-class or before important meetings than I have ever had. I never had little anxious moments in the middle of the night, wondering if I had said the right thing in that conversation, or mailed that form in to the right place.

I sort of forgot about the question, though, until this last week, when I started noticing little minor flutters of anxious thoughts -- did I remember to do that thing?  Should I be worried about this?  At first, it felt unfamiliar -- I wondered why I was suddenly such a worrywart.  But then, I realized that I've always had those little flutters of worry here and there, save for the last year.

So, I think that Maggie's presence in my life has been a very calming one, from way before her birth.  But now I'm interested in seeing how this will translate into her behavior out in the world.  She is already a pretty calm baby -- a good sleeper, pretty easy-going, with lots of happy smiles and coos.  I wonder if or how this calmness will play out as she grows?

What about you?  If you have children, did you notice yourself acquiring any of their traits during your pregnancy with them?

Language Lessons

I know from some of the reading I've done on language development and acquisition that when a child mispronounces a word, you should say it back to her correctly in a sentence so that she hears the right sounds and context.  But, sometimes, we find ourselves using the words that Shay mispronounces in the way he pronounces them.  I don't know whether we're reinforcing his notion that a banana is really a "nana," or whether he really thinks he IS saying "banana," and wonders why we're being silly and calling it a "nana."

One of these words is "Bapa."  My parents decided they wanted to be called "Grandma" and "Grandpa," so we referred to them that way until Shay was about 18 months and started calling them "Bapa" and "Bapa."  For a while, we said the names back to him correctly, until he eventually began calling them "Grrrandma" (with a nice French rolling 'r') and "Bapa."  So, we know he can do the 'g' and the 'r' sound together for "Grandma," but he still goes with "Bapa" for his grandpa.  None of us can quite figure out whether my dad is just "Bapa" now, or whether we should still push to correct it into Grandpa.

Another one is "dickle."  One of Shay's first words was more like a repeating sound of "c" and "l", referring to bicycles, tricycles, and motorcycles: "clclclclclclclclclclclclclclc!!!!" he would yell, whenever one drove/rode by.  We would reply, "Yes, a motorcycle! Wow!" and he would respond "clclclclclclclclclclclclc!"  Eventually, he began calling them all "dickle."  One of his most treasured toys is a beat-up little plastic motorcycle toy, and when he can't find it, he'll ask, "dickle?"  I find myself responding, "I don't know where your dickle is.  Where did you see it last?"  Just a moment ago, he cried out in his crib and when I went in to check on him, he whined, mournfully, "dickle" and pointed down in between his crib and the wall.  Toys end up there a lot, and it's a hard spot for me to reach, so I told him Daddy would get it.  I came out of the room and found myself telling Patrick, "you're on dickle rescue duty. It's between the crib and the wall."  Through the baby monitor, I heard Patrick retrieve the toy and give it to Shay, telling him, "You have to be careful with your dickle. Don't throw it out of your crib."  I know we should be working harder to correct this one, before he winds up at school talking about his dickle and I get called into the principal's office.

What do you do, do you correct your kids when they mispronounce words? Or do you adopt their words into a special family lingo?

The Pea

Worrisome moment #1: I am sitting on the living room floor, changing Maggie's diaper, and I look up to check on Seamus, who is eating a lunch of noodles with peas, corn, and tofu in his highchair.  He says, "Mommy! Pea!" and points to his nose.

Worrisome moment #2: I ask, "Seamus, did you put a pea in your nose?" and he looks at me with a smile in his eye, looks down at his plate of food, and then points to his nose again. "Pea."  Though I'm not quite sure if he actually shoved a pea up there or if he just came up with the idea that it could be done, I start to wonder how I am supposed to go about getting a pea out of a small nose.  I don't think I'd be able to reach it with my hands.  Will it work to ask him to blow his nose into a kleenex?

Moment of relief #1, also known as gross moment #1: Before I have time to try to do anything about the situation, Seamus tells me a joke, cracks himself up, and as he laughs, a glop of snot comes out of his nose, and then a pea.

Gross moment #2: He picks up the pea, and puts it in his mouth.

Moment of realization that I'm just going to have to get used to this kind of stuff, now that I have two kids #1: I briefly consider trying to snatch the snotty pea out of his mouth, but realize that I'm still holding a dirty diaper in my slightly poop-smeared hand, and reconsider going near anyone's mouth.  I go with a half-hearted request: "Please don't put anything in your mouth after it has been in your nose.  And don't put peas in your nose."

And, end scene.

Big Changes

The other morning, I came out of the bedroom and left baby Maggie in her co-sleeper, wanting to greet Shay and give him a little "Mommy time" without holding the baby.  He looked at me quizzically, and said "Hi, Mommy.  Baby?" I told him that the baby was in Mommy and Daddy's room, and he ran into the room, stood on his tippy-toes to peer over the edge of the co-sleeper, and said, "Hi, baby." He then ran back out into the living room to play trucks.

Little buddy is doing such a good job adjusting to being a big brother that it makes my heart feel like it's going to explode.

In truth, many things make my heart feel like it's going to explode lately.

Baby Maggie was born about 10 days ago.  She is a superstar.  She was 1 week late, and since I didn't want to be induced, my doctor sent me in to the hospital for a non-stress test and fluid check, to make sure she was still doing okay -- and to my surprise, the doctors weren't pleased with what they saw on the tests and wanted me to be induced.  I was shocked and disappointed and worried about the induction, but it turned out much better than I had feared.  They put something on my cervix to help it start to soften, and were planning on starting pitocin when the cervix was ready, but just that one little jump-start was enough to make contractions come on their own.  I labored for about three hours and the contractions started to get pretty intense, but no one -- including me -- guessed that things were progressing as fast as they were.  Being in labor for the second time felt much less unknown and less scary for me, and I went into a place somewhere deep inside myself to deal with the contractions.  Maybe this sounds hippie-ish and weird, but I was picturing the contractions as ocean waves as the tide is going out -- washing up over wet sand as they came on and washing back down and away as they faded.  I suddenly felt the urge to push, and hit the call button as no one but Patrick and my mom were in the room.  The nurse came in, and felt that the baby's head was right there in the birth canal (I hadn't been measured since three hours before, when I was dilated to a big fat zero still), and called other nurses in and they all started bustling around, getting the room ready for the doctor.  Meanwhile, I was on my hands and knees on the bed, facing the wall, still in my own zone and sort of unaware that no one else knew I was really close to pushing the baby out.  I had two massive contractions, one right on top of the other, and on the second one, Maggie's head and shoulders came out, and I heard my mom yell out, "It's the head!" and she reached out and caught the baby.  So that's how Maggie's grandma delivered the baby, even though we were at the hospital, a story that strikes me at times as funny and at other times as so touching and wonderful that again, I think my heart will explode.

She is a good baby, nursing like a champ and sleeping pretty well.  Shay has moments of jealousy, but all in all, he is doing really well.  He reads books to his sister, pointing out the cars and trucks and hammers and ladders, and he gives her fist bumps, and he greets her in the morning and says nighty-night to her at night.  When she cries, he brings her a receiving blanket, and sometimes even lets her snuggle with his security blanket.  In many ways, he seems to be taking this all in stride even better than his parents are, what with his mom getting weepy every time he gives the baby a sweet little fist bump.

Conversations With Shay

Language definitely hasn't come to Shay as fast as running, jumping, climbing, putting together puzzles, and pretty much any other large- or small-motor skill, but it is coming!  He started with some two- and three-word sentences late this fall, mainly stuff like "bye-bye Daddy" and "Mommy's nose" and "More pie" (appropriately, on Thanksgiving).  Now we are starting to have conversations.  Like, for example, this one:

Shay: "Peanana!"
Me: "Mmm-hmm."
Shay (excited): "Peanana!"
Me: "What are you saying to me?"
Shay (insistent): "Peanana!"
Me: "Peas and bananas? Are you listing foods that you like to eat?"
Shay (nods, smiles): "Corn."

Okay then. And yes, this is the kid who picks the vegetables out of the macaroni and cheese -- not to get to the macaroni and cheese, but because he'd rather just have peas and corn.  Now, if only I could keep myself from finishing off the uneaten pasta, we'd be good.